ESCONDIDO  With crime and homelessness sharply down in Grape Day Park after a recent crackdown, city officials have unveiled a plan to make the park a popular place for families and downtown workers.

The plan includes some upgrades coming in the next few months, such as more playground equipment, new security cameras and additional benches, tables and trash cans.

It also has long-term goals, including more modern bathrooms, a performance stage, a crosswalk to the children’s museum across the street and grassy areas suitable for concerts, soccer and volleyball.

“The way we’re going to turn this park around is by having a variety of different recreational uses from when it opens in the morning till when the sun sets in the afternoon,” Escondido police Capt. Bob Benton said last month.

Benton described the upgrades as a sort of second phase of the city’s plan to restore the 23-acre urban park to its former glory.

The first phase was an aggressive campaign launched last fall that included playing loud classical music to discourage loiterers; trimming trees; adding police patrols; and policies discouraging donations to the homeless.

City officials say that campaign has been remarkably successful, with more than 50 arrests and a sharp reduction in the number of homeless people.

But Benton said that’s only half the battle.

“This was the place to go for families in the 1960s and ’70s,” he said. “We need to restore it to its roots by increasing recreational use.”

Those efforts will include installing $80,000 in playground equipment and swing sets this summer near the Vinehenge play structure that resembles a giant grape cluster.

City planner Jay Petrek said Tuesday that the city also plans to create an area between the playgrounds for parents to watch their children and use exercise equipment.

The City Council recently approved $60,000 for new security cameras that will replace the park’s outdated cameras. And the council also approved $12,000 for fencing at nearby City Hall that will give criminals fewer places to hide, Benton said.

The city also plans to install more benches, tables and trash cans, Petrek said.

“People want to have picnics, but when you’ve only got four or five tables, it’s just not enough,” he said. “We want to take over the park during lunchtime.”

Councilwoman Olga Diaz praised that plan last month.

“We need to make it more like a place where you could have a birthday party,” she said.

Other short-term changes include plans to assign a full-time ranger to the park, and creating a long-term master plan that would make the park eligible for more grants.

Additional priorities include replacing the bathrooms and leveling the park’s boggy “Great Green” area for concerts and sports.

But City Manager Clay Phillips said all of the requested upgrades would cost more than $500,000 total, so city officials decided to take an incremental approach.

Benton said replacing the group-style bathrooms with single-use bathrooms would be crucial.

“A lot of the illegal activity occurs around those bathrooms and it always has,” he said. “People can do a lot of different things when they are out of sight. There are families that have walked in there and said they’ll never go back to the park because of the stuff they’ve seen.”

Benton said the Great Green is a wide-open expanse ripe with potential, but that it needs to be leveled.

“It’s a huge valley that essentially becomes a mud bog,” he said. “It’s just useless.”

Mayor Sam Abed hailed the overall plan. He said improving the park was a key to the city’s goal of enlivening downtown and persuading more people to visit Escondido.

“We’re coming alive, but we won’t get a second chance to impress people if we don’t have a safe, family environment the first time they come,” Abed said.

Wendy Barker, executive director of the park’s Escondido History Center, also praised the plan this week.

“Activity is the best security,” she said. “Criminals want to be alone where they can do whatever the heck they want.”